Yeah I know another boring environment entry but this sort of thing gets me all excited. In the last few weeks, though I suspect it’s been in the works for longer than that, it’s become apparent that the UK is showing a willingness to commit to a greener economy in terms of energy and transportation among other things.
According to the BBC article, a budget of £120m has been put in place for developing offshort wind farms and another £60m for tidal and wave technology. Another £10m has been allocated to fast-track the installation of the infrastructure to allow for the expansion of electric cars, which is exciting, though £10m doesn’t seem like much. I can’t see much on solar energy but then, this is the UK. Once again, I don’t think spending money on researching nuclear energy is a particularly good idea unless it’s an R&D budget for nuclear fusion. Following the Ontario debacle recently reported by Climate Progress, I’m growing increasingly uncertain about the economic value of nuclear power, nevermind the environmental impact of it.
Although their targets are still lower than those voted by Scotland for the 2020 mark, it’s still encouraging. The UK used to be a rather big emitter of greenhouse gases and though this has switched to larger countries like the US or Japan, it’s still among the larger emitters. For a country like this to show commitment in taking action to meet those targets should hopefulyl send a positive message to developping nations who are poised to see what the West is doing before they implement their own course of action. This gridlock of commitment needs to be broken, let’s hope it will help achieve just that.
On a more local level, there’s also the promise that these will provide a boost in creating jobs, up to 400k by 2015 apparently. If nothing else there is still hope and that’s what I want to value!